Patrick Irwin, Professor of Planetary Physics (from the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics group here in the Department of Physics) and global collaborators spectroscopically dissected the infrared light from Uranus captured by the eight-metre Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea. They found hydrogen sulphide, the odiferous gas that most people avoid, in Uranus’s cloud tops.

Oxford Physicists Line Up Laser Pulses To Drive Plasma Wakefields

A team led by Professor Simon Hooker's group at Oxford have shown that very compact particle accelerators could be driven by trains of laser pulses travelling through a plasma (an ionized gas). This work illustrates the potential for efficient plasma accelerators operating at much higher pulse repetition rates than possible to date.